East+Article+Summaries

=//Remedial Writing Courses: A Critique and a Proposal//= Author: Mike Rose Lisa Dobbs

Attempt to help college students who had been identified as remedial, was determined to not be effective as we misrepresent the process of composing. Some of the solutions he determined as a teacher was with Vietnam veterans, parole aids and newly released convicts. Most are directed to teachers of “remedial” writers vs. truly “basic” writers labeled at “substandard”

Five unrelated ways that we as educators limit the growth in student’s writing.

Asking students to write about personable and relevant versus compositional and academic in content. The students are assigned a topic and only given a limited time to write (self-contained).
 * 1) **Remedial Courses are Self-Contained**

Students at an early age need to be exposed to writing on academically oriented topics to help them develop their critical thinking skills to adequately prepare them for college courses.

The author collected 445 essay and take-home examination questions and provided these findings: 1) Most of the questions were expository in type requiring arguments with academic background. 2) Students had to collate information acquired from lectures and expository text and respond. There were no assignments requesting the students to respond to their personal experiences, express general opinions, or self-reflect. 3) In-class essays stimulated quick, write as fast as you can to cover the topic while the other assignments required an in depth process reflecting on a broad range of not readily analyzed or understood material, organize the response, and observe the data and events in diverse contexts. 4) Various academic audiences consider what is acceptable or not acceptable. For instance, a personal reflection might be acceptable evidence in many areas such as anthropology and sociology but not for the perspective of a behavioristic psychologist. 5) The stylistic information that was given to the students did not indicate a broad consensus among the academic audience. Basically, we need to expand their rhetorical experiences so that the students are not just writing simple entertaining responses. Students need to be able to write to social science expository questions and qualify it with supporting details.

2. **Simple Topics, Motivation, and the Elimination of Error** Students are not simply motivated by simple personal topics. The motivation is to achieve in writing with complex higher-level content. Keeping the topic simple does not necessarily eliminate the error in the composition. This shifts from writing to peers, which is informal to writing to an academic audience, which is formal writing. Students discontinued writing complex sentences avoiding the grammatical and punctuation errors. A balance between academically oriented topics and the corrections of errors will emerge successful outcomes.

There are three levels of composition: the process, the conceptual, and the rhetorical. The students were so concerned to produce a paper, placing every word and mark in its correct place, became challenged from allowing their words to flow consistently. Their growth is often limited, sometimes not able to develop on the rhetorical level because they are not able to connect with semantic and syntactic devices. We need to provide guidelines for students to remedy their errors. It is Rose’s opinion that we deliver a very limited definition of “writing skills.” He believes that we need to change our models of composing so the students have the opportunities to internalize. We provide instruction that allows the students to be enriched with opportunities in the writing process.
 * 1) **Error Vigilance and Reductionistic Models of Composing**


 * 1) **The Separation of Writing from Reading and Thinking**

Exposing the students to a variety of text fosters developed writing skills. Although reading and writing are two different content areas there is a connection between the processes. Critical thinking skills allow the student to react to a more complex academic topic. Integrating thinking, reading and writing skills generally produces successful outcomes.


 * 1) **The Narrowing of Exploratory Discourse and the Misconception of Discourse Structures**

According to the author, students are coming to college with limited access to writing extended academic discourse. This is more cognitive versus simple narration or description. For example, writing a paper on operant conditioning, or a self-referenced essay on a complex topic for genetics.

Tiered approach:

1) Seriation 2) Classification 3) Analysis Summary: Students need to be exposed to a variety of academic text and allowed to respond without the concern of making compositional errors writing their essays. Thinking, reading and writing should be integrated to produce extensive writing beyond the self-reflective approach. The students will initially complain, refuse but become engaged at a higher level of performance if we work with them slowly, scale carefully, and provide an abundance of assistance.
 * 1) Make sure that the patterns/strategies are real.
 * 2) Create a meaningful context for their use.
 * 3) Teach the schemata as strategies as well as structures.
 * 4) Sequence the schemata appropriately.

(The conflict between that exists in every teacher.) Author: Peter Elbow Emily Koch** The main thesis of the author is the built in conflict created by teaching. This conflict of teaching lies in the fact that it calls on skills and mental constructs that are opposed to one another and interfere with one another. He comes to this thought through the teaching of writing. A good writer must have the ability to conceive and use many ideas and critically reject everything but the best. In other words a writer must be both creative and very critical. A good writer gives equal energy to both. Taking the paradox and applying it to practice of teaching illustrates the contraries in the teaching process. The teacher has an obligation to knowledge and society and an obligation of loyalty to the student. There are two directions to go but there is only one real possibility if we are to be teachers and that is excellence and quality. He believes a contradictory stance is possible but only by acknowledging the conflict on an everyday basis.
 * Embracing Contraries in the Teaching Process

Illustration of the contraries The loyalty we have to the student
 * We act as allies and hosts as we instruct share and ask students to join the learning environment
 * We are committed to our students and thus
 * We believe all can learn
 * We should bring out the best in our students
 * When the student sees us as an ally they are more willing to take risk and connect to the material

Commitment to knowledge and society
 * We have been appointed by society as the guardians or bouncers of education
 * We discriminate, evaluate, test, grade and certify
 * We are invited to stay true to the expected standards of our discipline whether that fits the student in front of us or not
 * We have a responsibility to society to not practice grade inflation.

A question of scruples
 * Do we give up on the idea that these two goals can be met simultaneously?
 * If we are loyal to the student then we undermine the value of the grade and drain the value from the very thing we are supposedly giving them
 * If we adhere to the commitment to knowledge and society we will turn the students off

Illustration of teaching skills defined by the paradox If we want students to learn we should behave in the following ways


 * We should see our students as smart and capable
 * We should show students we are on their side
 * Instead of letting their grades hurt them we should argue for the parts they do understand and build on that
 * We should reveal our own position, particularly, our doubts, ambivalences and biases

If we want to increase our chances of success in serving knowledge, culture, and institutions


 * We should insist on absolute high standards
 * We should be critically minded and look at students and student performances with a skeptical eye
 * We should not get attached to students or take their part or share their view of things
 * Thus we should identify ourselves primarily with knowledge or subject matter and care more about the survival of culture and institutions than about individual students.

Satisfying the Paradox

How do we as teachers manage these two opposing goals? He puts teachers into three categories; hard teachers who are loyal to the knowledge and subject matter, soft teachers who are loyal to the students and middling teachers who sit in the middle. The teachers who sit in the middle are mostly dispirited teachers. He suggests that when there is a separation of teaching and assessment then the teacher is freed to be loyal to the student.

i. What is an A – student examples ii. What drags the paper down
 * 1) Advertise the gatekeeper role
 * 2) Be very clear about how things are graded in the beginning
 * 3) Give out examples of good and bad work
 * 4) Pass out the final on the first day
 * 5) For papers
 * 1) By setting standards at the beginning then you can set yourself as the person prepared to assist the student in achieving those standards.
 * 2) Be a coach not a critic
 * 3) Make sure they practice the little step and do them correctly
 * 4) When they practice look critically at their work to help them improve

“It is ones spirit or stance that is at issues here not how to organize a course. In order to teach well we must find some way to be loyal both to students and to knowledge or society.” We must keep this conflict in the forefront of our mind while we teach and choose our role at many moments during the day. This is the contraries of teaching.

Questions for the teacher – a self check
 * 1) Where do you sit between the continuum of loyalty to students or loyalty to the subject matter?
 * 2) Think about some of the teachers you know who sit in the middle of this continuum and do it well.
 * 3) What will you do differently after hearing the information in this article?

(Author information was not on the copy. Attempts to locate it were unsuccessful.) Reviewed by Mary Dohl July 16, 2007**
 * __What Students Know and What Schools Assess, Chapter 3__

This chapter covered the kinds of knowledge students have compared to the kinds of knowledge that schools assess. The two views of knowledge presented were the //authoritative// view and the //constructivism// view. Most schools teach and test authoritative views of knowledge. This type is imparted to the students through textbooks and the teacher. The constructivism form allows students to use their own strengths and forms of self-expression to show what they know. The author prefers the constructivism form because it gives students the opportunity to engage in new learning while being assessed, not simply being asked to parrot back what has been told to them.

//Below are components of the authoritative style://

1. __Transmission view of communication__: When information is given by transmission, it was said to be a stable entity. The analogy of a baseball was used. The information is thrown from person to person (often teacher to student) and caught in the same form in which it was delivered. When students are assessed, they are considered successful if they can show mastery of the knowledge they received-throw back the baseball.

2. __Final draft speech__: Just as in the final draft in writing, final draft speech has been revised, edited, perfected, and smoothed over. He/she found that students who use this type of speech are more likely to receive the teacher’s approval. (Douglas Barnes)

3. __Paradigmatic knowledge__: This is the kind of knowledge that often involves problem solving and the scientific process. In literature it assesses via analytic essays that are often required in literature classes including compare/contrast papers, extended definition essays, and analysis of some aspect of a literary work. (Jerome Bruner)

4. __Authoritative Ways__ __of Relating__: In this classroom, students would be pitted in competition with other classmates. The language of analysis would be used and rules would be established. Emotional responses would be discouraged.

5. __Linguistic intelligence__: This is the ability to express oneself through language. English classes often focus on the analytic domain rather than other ways of knowing that might be expressed in narrative pieces. (Howard Gardner)

//Following are the practices that are part of the constructivism approach://

1. __Constructivism view of communication:__ Students construct learning after being exposed to various sources of knowledge. Those sources include: the code of the text the student reads or produces, the personal experiences the student brings to the situation, the influences of the environment, and the cultural history that provides the values.

2. __Exploratory talk:__ Exploratory talk is used as students think aloud while they process information. The ideas may be “half-baked, and provisional.” Writing in such a class would be done freely at times as a way to think through a topic without needing to submit a finished product. (Barnes)

3. __Narrative knowledge__: This form of knowledge would be assessed in the form of a story. Characters and events would represent emotional or social truths. Such a work would be evaluated on the degree of emotional response that was experienced by the reader. (Bruner)

4. __Connected ways of relating__: Learners who have conected ways relating work well in collaboration with others in the class. They would be less aggressive in group discussions and more likely to support others.

5. __Multiple intelligences__: In addition to linguistic intelligence, the constructivism style of teaching and assessing would incorporate a combination of intelligences from the following; spatial intelligence, musical intelligence, bodily/kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, and naturalistic intelligence. (Gardner)

In summary, the author feels that there it is not good practice to administer authoritative style assessments to an entire class. In such a test, the instruction is about the text, not about the relationships between the classroom processes and the assessment. The author’s goal is to help educators see the need to assess the other ways students have of knowing things. Only then will the assessment be responsive to the range of diversity the students possess and take into account their individual strengths.

Linda Jackson SCKWP Summer 2007 Article Summary
 * //__Reading__//** **//__and Writing “hypertextually”: Children’s literature, technology, and early writing instruction__// by Dawnene D. Hammerberg**

Hypertext is “cues for reading that extend beyond the letters and words on the page, demanding interpretation and interaction with the text beyond the decoding of print.”

In the article Hammerberg uses children’s literature examples to define hypertext and lay a foundation for the premise that early instruction needs to use some of this form of ‘blended text’ to support the teaching of point of view (multiple perspectives) and inferential meaning (meaning beyond words). She suggests that in today’s world of computer graphics, web, blogs, and television, we need to update our teaching by using hypertextural examples and developing hypertext as a way to improve students’ skill base and creativity. Our students are connecting with various modes everyday with excitement and success. We need to harness this interest to develop writing skills in a more nonlinear and interactive form.

Hammerberg uses work by Dessang (1999) to discuss the changing textual forms in contemporary children’s literature that are keeping up with the digital age in that they support children who are digital natives. There are great shifts in perspective, characterizations, and subject matter being presented in children’s literature came about due to the use of the computer and publishing. 1. **Hand held hypertext** is a type of children’s literature that can be read in nonlinear, nonsequential ways by reader choice like a computer game or CD going to different ideas or links at the click of a button or turn of a page.
 * //__Black and White__//** by David Macauley is an example of this with four different stories taking place on the same page, nothing is black and white.
 * //__Throw Your Tooth on the Roof__//** by Shelby B. Beeler gives information about tooth stories from around the world in ‘bytes’ of information with maps and illustrations. And finally, **Footnotes and endnotes** also give the young reader interesting information with illustrations and text laid out side by side, on top of each other, or underneath each other. Thus giving the reader the choice to use their own perspective and interact to change the story or information in different ways.

2. **Graphics, imagery, and meaning beyond words** is the relationship between words and images that the reader must notice and draw conclusions from that are not delineated in the text. Reader, text, and image synergy must take place, all of them working together to gather the greater meaning, the irony, or humor. In the **//__The Stinky Cheese Man__//** by Jon Scieszka uses images to contradict reality. In the bio section, the author is pictured as George Washington and the illustrator is pictured as Abraham Lincoln. While in **//__Making Up Megaboy__//** by K. Roechkelein, the illustrator uses a photo of the attorney in the story who is defending a boy on the charge of murder, superimposing pointless words over the picture giving the reader a multi-layered image and impression of nobody knows why, no one has an answer or can explain this crime.


 * 3. Multiple perspectives, characterizations, and subject matter** uses print to explore a more realistic modern view of childhood and the way today’s world and the child interact. **//__Seedfolks__//** by Paul Fleischman is one story about a vacant lot told from 13 points of view. Today’s literature may have many “I” voices and be open to more chaotic story lines than older traditional children’s literature. Characters can function from many complex drives, even for a younger reader as **//__The House on Mango Street__//** by Sandra Cisneros does. Each vignette or chapter expresses Esperanza Cordero’s happiness, anger, sadness, harshness or some powerful personal feeling about a happening in her life.

The more modern view of childhood being published is not one of the golden moment in time where things are worked out in a nice, clean and humane manner. It is more realistic and resonates with today’s children and acknowledges the real social issues that impact real children’s lives. In today’s children’s literature, authors, illustrators, and publishers are assuming that children are capable of seeking connects and multifaceted cues. This is helping them connect with the video, computer, CD, and videogame culture of today’s children.


 * Contemporary Early Writing Instruction** is a section of this article that deals with the different pedagogical approaches to teaching writing in the early grades; shared writing, interactive writing, guided writing or writing workshop, and independent writing. All of these writing experiences are important for a young writer’s development because the students are taught how writers think, work and produce a product. In shared writing, interactive writing and guided writing the teacher leads the students through the writing process and so ‘homogenizes’ it. Most generally it is single point of view, linear, and embedded in traditional form a piece or genre should take. The independent writing is then expected to take the same form as the teacher lead pieces. When compared to the changing formats of actual children’s literature, it is this author’s opinion that we need to change the way we teach. The author sets forward that while these are all valid teaching strategies it crams the writer into a forced and narrow form that does not allow for multilingual or multitextual forms to be used and so does not tap into the reality of today’s child.


 * The Perspectives Represented in Early Writing Instruction** delineates some author’s problems with the above mentioned writing instruction methods. Routman (1994) and Dom, French, and Jones (1998) discuss the problems of singular view point and that the whole class functions as ‘I’ in the elementary classroom. Another problem is that sticking to the main text muffles the mult-perspectives and voices in the real experience of students. Theoretically it is possible for the voice of the student to come out, but in reality the student’s voice and complexity is trapped by the standard approach. By sharing and scribing in writing the teacher is ‘cleaning up’ or standardizing the writing and much of the real child blunted. Compared to contemporary children’s literature the complex nature of the contemporary child’s reality is being untapped.

Another part of the picture is subject matter. Kemper, Nathan, and Sebranek (1995) have written about the fact that writing instruction is bound by appropriate topics, not controversial topics; favorite things, places, descriptions of people, definitions of noble themes, how-to explanation, etc. So writing about real things is also homogenized and synthesized into the acceptable. The controversial is filtered into the acceptable single voiced view, linear and organized. When in reality controversy is not filtered or single or linear or organized. And that resolution or the definitive answer is at the end of the good, acceptable written piece. Teachers are after the creation of the readable, cohesive piece on an acceptable, appropriate topic.

In the final section, **Changing the Way We Think About Early Writing Instruction,** the author does strive to be fair by discussing the fact that writing instruction does not intend that students produce work in hypertext. The classroom focus to date has been about the writing process and getting words down in an acceptable and traditional form. But she does make the point that we need to grow and change. The traditional and the hypertextural can exist together. She sites Kress (1998) in that since there have been so many changes in the last two decades in media and communication, we need to update our teaching of the landscape of communication. That our teaching and our world are out of sinc, mismatched, and we need to strive to bring them into a closer fit if we want students to really learn, be interested, and succeed in the real world. Since many viewpoints, level of graphic images, nonlinear, non-print, and boundary breaking messages are already in the real world we should strive to use these as a way to improve and deepen out students’ understanding of communication. The very fact that these different forms exist in today’s children’s literature means we can help students produce hypertext in the classroom as an expression of themselves and their reality.

Article Summary by Alexa Harrelson

Worlds Beneath the Words: Writing Workshop with Second Language Learners By Ruth Shagoury Hubbard

According to this author, research by several different sources show that students who continue to keep up with their first language are better at both. Often times students that try to drop the study of their first language, end up not knowing either one very competently.

Virginia Shorey (ninth grade teacher) and Ruth Hubbard did their own research for four years. They used Donald Graves approach with bilingual and “regular” students in an integrated curriculum and classrooms.

Their research showed that English language and academic acquisition is best done through the development of their first language. They sited 10 other researchers that agreed with them. Cummins (1996) says that schools that affirm a students first language and culture has better student academic success. This seems reasonable to me in the regards that happy students are better learners. They encourage students to write in their first language as well as English.

Virginia Shorey wrote in Tagalog and English for many years. She only revisited her use of the language of Ilocano (her first language) recently. She documented her struggles as a student trying to do something that she had never done. She wrote stories from her childhood for her mother in her original language. Trying to translate from English to Ilocano or Ilocano to English was very difficult. She saw through her own experience how practice did help. She feels the accomplishment and pride from her success as a writer of her first language.

Vi, a Vietnamese woman, says that she was able to write with more detail in her first language and then translate into English. The translation of the good skill of using details in her writing became important. She had to learn more English vocabulary in order to communicate to the teacher and the other students about her previous life in Vietnam. Having an important audience is also critical to making writing important. Often their family can be that audience. It turns out that academic skills as well as linguistic skills such as dialog, detailed description, and varying word strategies transfer quite easily from first to second languages. Vi explains that there are some things that do not translate correctly. Some words in Vietnamese have more than one definition while the words in English only have one definition each. She has to overcome these problems and this gives her more experience with both languages.

Students were taught to analyze their writing processes as an aid to learning. They are given different medias as prompts to help them write and they find the ways that help them the most. Just like “regular” students, they have different abilities and interests that will allow them to keep hooked up to their own learning. All people need to learn who they are and writing is a wonderful tool to help that process, no matter what language it is done in. Isn’t that what makes our students into excellent learners?

___

Terri Rose Article Summary South Central Kansas Writing Project 2007

What’s Your Story? Personal Narrative and Weekend Webs From //Guided Writing// by Lori D. Oczkus

This article encourages teachers to implement an alternative to the Monday morning tradition of writing about the weekend. The Weekend Web is a two-step process incorporating five minutes of brainstorming, two minutes of adding descriptive details to one idea and five minutes of writing one or two short paragraphs about the chosen activity. The author listed several advantages of using the Weekend Web. The benefits list includes a student-friendly graphic web, students writing a detailed first draft, and teachers modeling writing techniques and skills. The term “writing inch by inch” was used to describe how teachers can model any writing skill by focusing in small segments. When teachers use personal examples to illustrate writing techniques the students learn to develop detailed writing in manageable increments. Weekend Webs teach students to focus on a little bit at a time and make that topic interesting. There are lesson ideas in areas such as teaching new skills, modeling, shared writing, guided writing, independent writing, and guided conferring. A chart provided Mini-lesson suggestions focusing on the Six Writing Traits. Also included in the article were several student samples of the Weekend Web in action.

Wendy Graber Article Summary South Central Kansas Writing Project 2007


 * “I’ll do it my way: Three writers and their revision practices”**
 * by Stephanie Dix**

In teaching middle school age students, one of the most challenging things to do is to get the students to edit and actually revise a piece of writing. Their idea of “revising” is to simply have a friend read their paper (or they may just do it themselves) and then rewrite it in neater handwriting or type it on the computer. Make changes? Write it again? Make //more// changes and then write it //again//? These are the utterances from my gaped-mouth students when I break the news that, no, they are not quite finished with their paper. The article by Stephanie Dix documents a study on three students and their revision practices. I thought that, by understanding what the students are actually thinking about the editing and revising process, I could in turn learn how to better instruct or motivate my own students in perfecting their work. The study in this article focuses on three students in the New Zealand school system in 5th or 6th grade, with two writing samples: one, a poetic/creative piece; and one of a transactional context. The findings of the study show that young writers, just like expert writers, work on the writing and revising process in different ways. Whether on the conscious or sub-conscious level, revision requires higher order thinking skills to perform the two types of revisions: //text-based//, which alters the meaning of the word or passage; and //surface//, which are changes like corrections for mechanical errors or grammar without altering the meaning in the process. While the study used three students as the basis for this research, participants were meant to cover a broad spectrum of writers. Student A is an avid writer. He writes for enjoyment at both home and at school. Student B is a fluent writer as well, writing whenever the mood strikes her. She has specific writing tools set aside at home for this purpose. Student C writes only when necessary. Though he wants his writing to be accurate, he only writes when instructed to do so and never writes just for the sake of writing. Although Students A and B do not represent the majority of my student population, I did learn some things that I may be able to transfer over to writing instruction in my classroom. Student A used the planning stage to record all his thoughts on the topic for both the poetic assignment and the transactional context. This student tended to revise during the entire writing process, from the pre-writing stage through to the end product. Student B’s tendency was to simply get her thoughts on paper, then continually re-read and revise as she went. For both Student A and Student B, //text-based revision// (the revision that affects meaning) was continual in writing both the poetic and transactional forms. //Surface revisions// for both these students occurred only at the end of the piece, when reviewing for mechanical or grammar errors. Student C, I feel, is more representative of most of the middle-school students I work with. Once this student decided on a topic for his writing, for either poetic or transactional forms, he started putting ideas on paper without pondering or searching for more interesting ideas or words. When left to his own revising, changes were not conducted until he felt the piece was finished; however, then his tendency was to make surface revisions as opposed to text-based ones. Only when student peers were involved did significant text-based revision occur. Overall, all students made more changes and revisions to their poetic writing rather than to their transactional paper. This could be partly because creative writing is more flexible with language use than is transactional writing. When writing transactional pieces, however, the student was writing in accordance with a teacher-generated check-list of content requirements. Writers of this genre, then, are given “less opportunity to take risks and explore language options.” Thus, the result is fewer text-based changes and more surface revisions. The results of this study demonstrate that student writers not only approach the writing process differently, but also the revision process depending on the purpose of the piece. For the instruction in my own classroom, several points from this research can be shared with my student writers. Revision CAN occur in the pre-writing/planning stage. Revision CAN occur //during// the initial writing or first draft stage. Revision CAN include both text-based and surface changes throughout the writing process, not just at the end of a draft. As educators and writers we subconsciously know this information and are accustomed to making appropriate changes along the way. However, many of our students are like Student C who, for one reason or another, feels that revisions are surface in nature and occur just prior to the final product. It is important to share with our students, model, practice, and reiterate that revision can happen in all stages of the writing process. I think this will not only make our students more actively engaged in the revision process, but will help to cultivate a more confident writer as well.

Warehouse for Artic Renee Kohlhagen Article Summary July 11th, 2007

Writing as a Mode of Learning Written By: Janet Emig

Emig wrote this article to explain the importance of writing and how it supports the many different language processes. She first describes the relationship between talking and writing. Explaining that talking is the brainstorming or first step in the writing process. But she also wants to make clear the differences. Emig describes writing as artificial, something that is taught, not innately ingrained. Next, she explains how the process is slower than talking. Words, phrases and analogies are well thought out, analyzed and require vibrant uses of language to create a mind movie. Then she continues by explaining that the audience is often absent when the writer creates his work, requiring the author to describe an artificial setting based on the readers prior knowledge. //“…writing is our representation of our world made visible…”// She also describes talking or verbal language as natural, a primitive quality that we can not repress. Talking or conversation depends on the environment. Who is listening? Casual or Formal? It is clear she believes that talking is a less committed act because no graphic representation is required. Perhaps most interesting is the understanding that written speech, unlike verbal, allows for the continual restructuring of an idea through the process of rereading and rewriting to achieve a more exact intention of the author when the message is finished, making the final product a much deeper construct of the mind. This is due to the elimination of situational time constraints. A correlation to this involves the listener, who must be able to receive the information of verbal content while dealing with time restraints that, again, do not similarly exist when reading, which occurs at the individual pace of the reader. Second, Emig describes writing and learning. She uses Jean Piaget’s categories of how we deal with reality to explain her theory.

Iconic: Eye/Sight Kinesthetically: Hands/Touch Symbolically: Brain/Analyze

She explains how writing uses all of these traits, which also requires us to use both sides of the brain. She refers to the attributes of the left and right hemispheres and describes how writing is bispheral in that we physically hold the pen that creates the words on the page, but first we must create the visions and situations from the images and sensations we experience and are stored in our brains. //“…writing is an expansion of our inner speech…”//

Finally, she concludes the article by charting the many characteristics writing uses that are tools for successful learning.
 * Writing is a much slower process than talking allowing self provided immediate feedback.
 * One writes best as one learns best, at ones own pace
 * Connects visual, kinesthetic and symbolic learning, creating a long-term record that can be analyzed and synthesized.
 * Writing is active, engaging, personal and the author chooses the pace.